A Question of Control
by Coruscare
Summary: Or in Clint's case, dealing with a lack of it. Luckily for him, a certain team won't seem to leave him alone while he does so.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I am not Stan Lee or Marvel or Disney. Therefore, I own nothing of these characters.

There are spoilers for the film. (But that shouldn't matter because you've all seen it. If you haven't, then, seriously, go right now. It's amazing. Actually, even if you've already seen it, go see it again. I don't mind. I'll wait here til you're done.)

* * *

She'd brushed it away when he'd asked. Hadn't even waited for the entire question to make it out of his mouth.

_"How many agents did- "_

_"Don't torture yourself like that"_, she'd told him. "_It's not you. It's Loki. It's magic and monsters and nothing we ever were trained for."_ And she wasn't wrong. Clint had lived on battlefields of one kind or another for the better part of his life and, even just coming off of the twisted gut-wrenching realization of being so _used_ as he had been, he knew that she was telling him the truth. It was something every soldier, every warrior, had to learn eventually. Well, the ones who managed to stay whole.

Control was faint at best and illusionary at worst. Nothing governed a firefight but physics and God. Attacks would come whether or not you were prepared, whether or not you were equipped. People died though your hand never faltered in staunching the blood flow, though you made it back with the medicine in time, though the mission was over and you were supposed to be safe. You had to learn to do what you needed to do, knowing all the while that your effort and emotion might come to nothing.

It was something he'd thought he had mastered, far before taking up arms for his country in the military. When his father came home, full of whiskey and the bitterness if failed to dull, it had never mattered what Clint did. If the house was clean, if he stayed perfectly quiet, if the food was prepared, if he had good grades, if he didn't talk back then the pain came anyway. His father would yell the excuses, shout his justification for such 'punishment' but Clint had been four when he'd realized that, in this, there was nothing he could do to change the outcome.

So he had learned to control the only thing he could. His actions might never dictate change but choosing to act was still his. And when his first mission went south, those old lessons came back and found a new application.

This time, though, he'd lost control of the one thing he thought he had. Of course he'd had SERE (SHIELD had their very own special, home-made version of it). He'd been put through the paces of what it could mean to be influenced or compromised or, yes, tortured into acting against his beliefs. But this had been so _utter_, so complete. To be unmade. To be, essentially, himself except with any of his own input. If he tried to think back, the memories of his actions were hazy, tinged with flaring red, but the sense of reasoning behind it had been absolute.

He'd known that Natasha was right. _It's Loki, not you._ If he had ever deluded himself into thinking that he knew how the world worked, into believing that, at the very least, he could control himself, then the world was teaching him that control is never absolute in human hands. And he would, as he always had, work to reconcile himself with that.

But for now, he was himself and Natasha could be right all she wanted. After the clean-up crew arrived and Loki was properly stowed away and everyone proved themselves to be more or less in one piece, Clint had found an empty lab (not an easy task when half the Helicarrier had been blown or crushed or smashed or rammed through). He'd pulled a chair toward a working console and hacked, with a little subtlety, into the infirmary's records. He'd followed the name of each of the dead or injured into their personnel files and he read about all the people he had killed.

It wouldn't change anything. That, like so many other things lately, was beyond him. But he could make the choice not to turn away.

* * *

Natasha leaned against the cool metal wall right beside the doorway. She knew Clint was inside and she knew what he was doing. She wasn't entirely sure she knew why, beyond a sense of guilt that made him a better person than he would ever acknowledge, but she left him alone for now. He was a grown man, a Hell of a soldier, and perfectly capable of making his own decisions. And if she told herself that enough, maybe the rising urge to drag him bodily away from that screen would go away.

She glanced up at the sound of footsteps echoing in what should've been an abandoned hallway. She didn't reach for her gun but she didn't relax either. "Mr. Stark."

"Ms. Romanov." He came with a smile and a jaunty wave that seemed out of place with the slight limp he walked with and the bandages visible from beneath his sleeve.

"Agent," she corrected and was surprised at his reaction. Something about her reminder - or was it the word itself? - darkened his expression and slowed his pace. She wondered quietly what could cause something like that in a man like Stark. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Not unless you've got a couple hundred terabytes for me to sift through." She arched an eyebrow at him. "No, not here for you. The computers in Banner's lab are either fried or in pieces. Thankfully somebody had some foresight and all research is automatically saved every thirty seconds. You can only access the information from another lab, though. I need the room behind you."

"It's in use."

"By who? Or," he held up a hand, "better question, by who that's more important than me?" He made to step around her but she shifted smoothly to block his path. "Ooh. Is someone still iffy about my hacking into your network? Because I figured we'd put that all behind us, what with my saving the world and everything." He mimicked holding a globe in his hands. "Whole world. All me. Mostly me." Natasha crossed her arms. "Okay, you helped. Will you let me get on with potentially ground-breaking work?"

"This isn't SHIELD. This is me, telling you that this room is being used. Find some place else." Tony opened his mouth and Natasha, wrangling every instinct that told her to do otherwise, cut him off with an added, "Please."

Tony stopped, his look sharpening with interest and something that might have been concern. She knew such a sudden shift in her demeanor would likely only spur his curiosity and desire to get into the room. But she guessed (hoped) that it would be exactly that which would make him reign himself in. "You know, I'm not a big fan of secrets," he told her.

She almost smiled at that because Tony Stark had been three minutes into a press conference before he announced to the world he was Iron Man and she, who was so good at what she did, had been mere weeks undercover when his nosing around caused suspicion. "I know."

He nodded and turned to walk away. And she returned to leaning on the wall, trying to listen to what might be happening inside despite the thickness of the door.

* * *

In the ruins of what had been his lab, Bruce sifted through twisted metal and broken glass for anything that might be salvageable.

"Dr. Banner," Steve greeted as he walked in, "I didn't know you would be here."

"There isn't really any other place for me to go," he said. There was very little chance of him retrieving anything worth keeping but it had looked like the only other place he'd be welcome to stay was the infirmary. "Mr. Stark was here briefly, as well, but I think he went to find out if anything of our work can be saved." He pushed the glasses further up on his nose, turning to cast a brief glance at the soldier. "What are you doing here, Captain?"

Steve shrugged, looking a bit sheepish. "There isn't any place for me to go right now, either. They assigned me quarters when I came aboard but I think you and Thor sort of...rolled through them."

Bruce nodded. The only thing he remembered before waking up naked in an empty warehouse was Agent Romanov. He remembered that she tried to calm him down, tried to reassure him but there had been fear in her voice. Feeling his heartbeat speed up (not out of fear or anger, but at the thought of being the cause of such fear and anger), he forcefully pulled his thoughts away and back to the present. "Sorry," he offered.

Steve looked surprised but smiled. "I wasn't blaming you, doc. Doubt anyone else is either."

"Good to know they won't be sending a bill for the repairs."

"Ha! If they're going to bill anyone, it would be me, because I could actually afford it," Tony said as he came in. "Not that I'd pay it. Because what happened today? Definitely worth more than a consultant's fee."

"You could've just commed me," Bruce said to Tony. "If you were able to retrieve the information, it would be better to stay in a functioning lab while we review it. There's nothing working in here."

"I don't have it."

"What?"

"Well, according to the schematics I had Jarvis download - "

"You mean after hacking into encrypted files?" Steve asked mildly.

Tony, for a brief second, wasn't sure if an argument was starting again, but caught the joke for what it was. He sighed. "Yes, fine, according to the schematics I very illegally downloaded - bad me - they only have three labs on this tub. One that they gave to you, Dr. Banner. One that is mostly strewn across the Atlantic Ocean. And a smaller, almost back-up one, which is "in use" currently." As he talked Tony made his way out of the room, confident as always, that everyone would follow him. After exchanging a look, Bruce and Steve did so.

Walking down the small set of stairs and into Command, Tony shooed one of the agents away from a working console. Steve was about to point out that maybe the man was doing something important until he saw the Galaga screen right before Tony pulled up something else. "What're you doing now?"

"You can't access anything from here." Bruce frowned. "That was the point of going to the - "

"I'm not looking for the research. I'm trying to get into the security cameras." Tony noticed that the volume of his voice had caught the attention of the woman sitting next to him. She stared at the three of them rather stonily and he rolled his eyes. "Please. Like it isn't anything I couldn't have done otherwise. It's just faster if I don't have to start from the outside."

"Care to explain why you're doing it at all?" Steve asked.

"The last lab, the smallest, was being used."

"Yeah, you mentioned that," Bruce said.

"Ms., er, Agent Romanov was standing guard by the door and kept me from going in. She wouldn't tell me why."

Steve shook his head. "That's not a surprise."

"It wasn't a SHIELD thing. It's something else." Tony looked at his two teammates. "And she said please." That was enough to silence them both, for a moment anyway. A few more rapid clicks and the screen was filled with the clear image of a hallway where Natasha Romanov was leaning against a wall. The time stamp in the corner told them that it was current and Tony quickly found the equivalent of a "rewind" button. It seemed that she had been there, mostly unmoving for at least three hours before they saw why. Just far back enough, they watched as Clint walked through the empty hallway and slipped into the room, followed minutes later by his redheaded guard.

Tony rubbed his hands together. "Now to find out what he's doing."

* * *

Author's Note: That was a bad place to end this but I needed a break-off point and couldn't really find anywhere else for it to go. I'm sorry that the end is so abrupt.

The italicized parts in the first section are quoted from the movie, or as closely as I can remember it.

I'm slightly mixing MCU-verse with comic-verse, when it comes to Hawkeye's history. In the movie, Hawkeye seems to be a composite between the world-616 character and the Ultimates counterpart, but I'll be going off of the original for now. Since _The Avengers_ didn't really expand on his past very much, let's all pretend that I'm not cheating. XD Other than that, I've tried to keep everyone in character with how they were in the movie.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear what you think. God bless.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

Clint had brought the paper and pen with him, knowing there wouldn't be any to be found in the room itself. It wasn't the way things were done anymore. Everything was electronic, printed in triplicate with fill-in dashes in all the right places. He had worked to master technology. He could by-pass 87% of the firewalls he went up against (SHIELD demanded at least 75% success for any senior field agent). He could fly planes so advanced the world didn't realize they existed yet. He was responsible for the invention and, at least in part, the creation of most of his specialty arrows. But whatever he might be capable of, Clint was always going to be a little analog.

So he'd come prepared. Lined paper, because his eyes were gritty with exhaustion and his hands shaky with something else. A handful of cheap Bic pens, because he expected to run out of ink at least once. The soft, dark material that still covered three of his fingers made his first attempts a little clumsy but he started over, kept working until the script came through clean and neat and smooth. Not knowing any of the numbers beforehand, he'd brought as much paper as he could get his hands on.

* * *

Once he was in the security system, it was only slightly easier for Tony to maneuver around. Despite whatever flippant comments he might make about government-issue equipment (and he did make them), he had to admit that the interface was rather sophisticated. At least more so than he was used to seeing from the military, who often eschewed such things in favor of ease of use. Still, the Hellicarrier had been built with top-secret technology in order to develop top-secret technology, which meant that anything related to what he would've classed as R and D (ie, anything in the labs) was more protected than almost anything else.

"I don't think we should be doing this," Steve said. They'd found out what Natasha was doing there but going any further seemed too intrusive. "I'm sure whatever Barton is doing, it's none of our business."

"You know, the last time you said that, you followed it up by physically breaking into their storage room and doing your own snooping," Tony said.

Steve shook his head. "That was different."

"Uh-huh. How?"

"Disobeying an order you believe to be wrong isn't the same as prying into a friend's private affairs because you're bored or curious."

"And dressing things up with pretty words doesn't make the actions you take exactly the same," Tony shot back, not looking away from the screen.

Steve had opened his mouth to respond when he caught sight of Bruce, shaking his head with resignation. He remembered the doctor's words about their team being a time-bomb, an unstable and explosive chemical mixture, and he reminded himself that from everything he had seen the "Avengers" were comprised almost entirely of people used to working alone. He shoved away rising anger or annoyance. Though his rank named him a captain, the nature of the missions he undertook during the war meant that he was actually closer to a fire team or squad leader, since he rarely commanded more than the six soldiers who comprised the "Howling Commandos". Of any of the them, except perhaps Thor, he knew how small group dynamics could play out. He'd weathered more than his share of team shouting matches (though those were just as likely to come in French, Gaelic or Japanese before) and he'd seen what forced interaction could mean when big personalities were in play. If they were ever going to work together - and, frankly, they should because they could be one Hell of a team when they did - they would need to do better than this. He would need to be better than this.

And it would have to start with showing Bruce that they weren't just bickering children who'd turn on each other at the first chance and convincing Tony that disagreement wasn't necessarily disapproval or judgment. So Steve took a breath, turned away from the doctor and studied the scientist, still focused on the computer, for a moment. He hadn't known the other man long, a couple of days all told, and a little less than half of that had been spent with both were wearing their respective masks. But he recognized the emotion, even when played out on unfamiliar features, now that he thought to look for it. "You're worried," he stated with surprise.

Tony scoffed but Steve knew he was right. "Don't talk to me about using words to hide what you mean. You could've just said you were worried about them. We are, too."

"And would that have changed anything?"

"Maybe," Steve said. "Intent can count for a lot."

Tony shook his head, clearly still not agreeing with what he considered little more than semantics, but when he rolled his eyes, it wasn't dismissive or full of scorn. "And I am not _worried_," he scoffed. "Agent Romanoff was acting strangely and Barton's somewhere he shouldn't be. I'm just...in. Oh. Very nice."

The screen switched to what had to be the internal camera, mounted in a top corner. The time stamp read about three hours ago and showed an empty room, about half the size of the lab Bruce and Tony had used. It definitely seemed to be meant more for viewing scientific results than for experimentation. The three of them watched as the door slid open and Clint walked in, grabbed the one chair available and set it in front of the nearest monitor.

"What's he doing?" Steve asked.

"Looks like he's doing some hacking of his own," Bruce said. "He's obscuring the screen, though, there's no way to tell what he's looking for."

"Can you do the little thing you did before, but move it, uh, forward?" Steve twirled his fingers.

Tony, in a show of admirable restraint, didn't say anything to that. He fast-forwarded through Clint's breakthrough into whatever he was trying to get into and slowed it a little when the archer flattened some papers he'd brought with him on the desk and pulled some pens from his pocket. "Seriously? He's going to copy whatever that is on little tree strips? Why not just bring a stone tablet and carve it in?"

Bruce reached forward and, edging Tony out of the way a little, resumed fast-forwarding. Clint had fallen into a simple pattern, reading, judiciously, whatever it was on the screen before taking up the pen and writing with just as much focus. "It doesn't look like he's just copying," he noted. He elaborated when Steve looked at him. "He's not writing continuously, glancing up at the screen every now and then. He reads through a section and then focuses entirely on what he's writing."

Tony frowned. "And this is useful how?"

"Just an observation," Bruce replied.

Steve slapped Tony's shoulder lightly. "He seems healthy enough, from what we've seen."

Tony turned a stubborn glare on the blond. "I was _not _worried."

"Of course you weren't," Bruce said.

"You," he pointed at Bruce, "are supposed to be on my side."

It had been a long time since Bruce had had enough people around for there to be sides from which to choose and he smiled a little. "What gave you that idea?"

"You - " Tony stopped when Steve, who had turned back to the screen, suddenly made a startled sound and then bolted toward the door.

Tony and Bruce looked at the camera and realized why immediately, faced with an image of Clint sprawled on the ground and his papers settling around him. Tony jumped from his seat and was a half-step behind Bruce in heading for the doors.

* * *

Steve had far outstripped them by the time they reached the first turn of the hallway. Being at least a decade younger, far more used to physical exertion and with the super soldier thing, it wasn't the least bit surprising. But Bruce felt a surprising amount of frustration welling up at having been left behind. He focused on keeping his heartbeat as steady as he could, even while his feet pounded on the metal plating. He knew that anger, fear and pain most easily called to the surface that Other Guy, but he considered the possibility that concern might do the same.

While he'd cared for the sick and injured wherever he'd gone, to the best of his abilities and to forestall the guilt that always followed him, he wasn't used to having a personal investment in such care. He wondered if it was normal to feel so involved with people after so short time. Had it been like this before he'd dropped off the face of the Earth? Had it always felt this way, when he'd had friends? It was hard to remember, except in the most general of terms, what life was like before, and he became acutely aware of the fact that he was only thinking about these things now in order to avoid thinking about what could possibly be going wrong.

Keeping even pace beside him, Tony was yelling and waving his arms to clear the path of anyone who was in the way. Cursing Clint's name all the while for being too stupid not to be at the infirmary if he was injured.

"_You_'re supposed to be in the infirmary," Bruce pointed out between breaths, because he remembered the argument between Tony and the doctor and the very beautiful blond woman on Tony's phone while he was getting his own check-up (he was fine, as usual). They'd told the billionaire that he was battered and bruised, that they didn't know the effects of spacial vacuum on the suit or on the man inside the suit, that he should stay in bed while they ran some more tests. Tony had insulted the doctor and said "love you, honey, bye" before hanging up on the woman. Then he'd walked out of the infirmary with Bruce, toward the lab.

"We...we're going to have to talk about the whole "being on my side" thing. 'Cause you, you're not good at it."

"I'll work on that."

* * *

Steve thanked God for his art training, as he ran through a long corridor and ducked through the fourth door to the left. It was something he'd discovered early on in his military career, that those years he'd spent studying proportion and space and composition had given him a good eye for maps and floor plans. And though he'd been in Central and Western Europe for most of the war, he'd spent just enough time on carriers to know they could be notoriously difficult to navigate (that is, he was on a USN carrier once for about three hours and had been hopelessly wandering for two of them). Seeing the Hellicarrier's size and design, it was one of the first things he'd asked to see once he was aboard.

The knowledge enabled him now to make quick work of getting to the lab, made easier by the fact that all the labs were on the same level. He didn't wonder at Bruce and Tony's being able to follow him (and he didn't doubt they would). Tony had just been there, but Steve wouldn't be surprised if both men had memorized the schematics for the entire thing, along with all the jets on deck.

One more corner. Then, "Agent Romanoff!"

She'd already been turned in his direction, he wasn't trying to be quiet, when he approached. "Captain."

"You need to open the door, Natasha," Steve said, deliberately using her name for the first time. He'd held back on it, referring to her either by her patronymic, her title or ma'am, out of a natural sense of professionalism and the unspoken feeling that she might prefer it that way. But right now, he wanted her attention.

The verbal tactic worked and she skipped right past confusion and declination to ask, eyes narrowed and voice serious, "What's going on?"

"Tony was curious," he saw her tense, "and worried, so he did whatever to the cameras. He wanted to know what was inside. It's Clint - "

"I know it's Clint," she snapped.

"He collapsed, Natasha." At that point, Steve berated himself for not paying enough attention to the clock on the screen, because he couldn't say how long it had been since Clint had fallen from the chair. "I saw it happen."

Muttering something in Russian that he vaguely recognized as a string of expletives, she turned immediately to the keypad by the door. That it slid open almost as quickly as she'd punched in the numbers confirmed for him that she'd let Clint take his time alone. The rising volume of her profanities made it just as clear that she was blaming herself for doing so.

* * *

Clint lay on the floor, half on his side, his back to where they stood. They were kneeling beside him in two steps, heedless of the paper that crunched beneath their boots and knees. Natasha met his eyes and Steve nodded, helping her to gently situate Clint on his back. Then, with quick and sure hands, they began to examine him for injuries. "He didn't hit his head," Natasha said softly, running her fingers along his scalp.

"Makes sense. He didn't fall so much as...slide off the chair." And that wasn't necessarily better news, because if he'd hit his head they'd at least have a reason for why he was unconscious now. If he'd lost consciousness and then fell, it meant something else was wrong. Steve didn't find any tender softness in Clint's chest that might indicate broken ribs and the archer had seemed to have full range of motion after the battle.

"Bruises. Some glass." The cuts and abrasions littered his bare arms and Natasha knew that the rest of his body was likely the same.

"Yeah - "

They were interrupted by the sound of running feet and then Bruce was kneeling beside them. Steve pulled back a little to let the man with far greater experience continue the examination. Natasha, unobtrusive near Clint's head, stayed where she way.

"The medics are coming. I contacted them on the way over," Tony said, standing but staying close by. "What happened?"

Steve shook his head. "I don't know. He doesn't seem any more injured now than before. Doc?"

"Hold on," Bruce said with preoccupation as he unzipped the front of the uniform. Beneath the layer of leather and Cordura, Clint's tightly woven Kevlar undershirt seemed mostly intact. Because of the solitary nature of Clint's job during the Incident, it was more difficult to find a starting point for possibly injuries. The others had fought together, on occasion, so it had been easy for Thor to point out that Steve had been shot in the side or for Tony to say that Natasha had landed awfully hard on her shoulder when she'd rolled during a fall. Some cops had seen Steve fall off the second story of a bank and land on a car. Hulk had seen Thor clear out buildings and Natasha had, at least, glimpsed Tony's Jonah act. That everyone had seen Tony's last fall was a given. But no one could say for certain if they saw Clint take any particularly bad hits, not after he'd left ground level.

So, Bruce went as Natasha and Steve had. He started with the general and tried to find specifics. Without the bag he'd had with him even in India, though, it remained cursory and unhelpful until the medics arrived.

All four of them stepped aside to give the trained team room to work in the increasingly cramped space. Clint was loaded onto a stretcher and born away and Natasha and Bruce had gone right along with them. Tony was moving to follow when he noticed Steve kneel down to pick up the papers that were down stomped, torn and crumpled. Tony stepped back, glancing at the still active screen. The list of names, indicated by the date and time recorded, was of dead or injured following the attack on the Hellicarrier and Loki's escape. Tony swallowed when he ran across "Coulson, Phil" in the long line of deceased. "Why would he - ?"

"He felt guilty," Steve said quietly, straightening up with the last of the papers in hand. "Sometimes," he shrugged, "sometimes knowing their names can help."

Tony, who had read everything he could find on Dr. Yinsen and the Afghani town of Gulmira after he'd been returned to the States, couldn't think of a reply. Instead, he asked, "So, what are those?"

Steve handed him a few. "Letters."

Tony scanned through them.

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mullen..._

_...Mrs. Yee...  
_

_...Mr. Aritakala...  
_

_...Ms. Hannah Corehaim...  
_

_...Col. and Mrs. Salvatore...  
_

_...I deeply regret...  
_

_...It is my hardest burden...  
_

_...I am so very sorry to tell you that your son...  
_

_...your niece...  
_

_...your fiance, ...  
_

_...your brother has been wounded during the attack on New York City...  
_

_...was killed in the defense of his country and his unit..._

"Oh."

* * *

Author's Notage: Thank you to everyone who reviewed or put this story on alert. The response for _Control_ has floored me. I'm sorry that this second part has been so long in coming and I'm grateful to everybody who's still reading and interested.

So, this is turning into more of a team fic than I'd first intended. XD Everyone else's issues and personalities are just really compelling, they kind of threw themselves in.

This story is completely un-betaed, so if I'm misremembering details from the movie or there are problems with grammar/structure/characterization, please let me know so that I can fix it. I know that POV in the second section is jumpy and I'm not entirely sure about that last part with the letter fragments. Feedback on anything is very welcome.

I hope that you liked this. I'll try to make sure the next chapter doesn't take so long. Thank you and God bless.


	3. Chapter 3

Surprisingly, I'm still not Stan Lee or the anthropomorphic personification of Marvel/Disney (dang it). So, this isn't mine.

* * *

That there wasn't technically a waiting area in the Infirmary didn't seem to bother any of the people that lingered – and indeed had been lingering for the past few hours – in the widened hallway.

Natasha was leaning against a wall directly opposite from the door Clint had vanished into. The stance was very like the one she had adopted when playing sentry at another door, for the same man, but this time against her own choosing. Steve stood, without the slightest indication of tiring, just a couple of feet from her. Bruce was not quite pacing, as his feet didn't follow a single path, but he wandered up and down the corridor just the same. Tony was the only one seated, having contrived, through the sympathy of a nurse for his fresh injuries, to steal a chair that he'd pushed up against a wall.

There was a clamor that they could hear through the bulkhead, which sounded like several orderlies being talked over by a familiar, booming voice. Breaking a silence which had been growing for the past thirty minutes – no one, it seemed, could find anything to talk about at that moment – Tony asked, "Is that Thor's dulcet tones I hear?"

"I told him," Steve said. "Wasn't sure if he'd want to come, but figured he needed to know." He wasn't prepared to explain why he felt it was so important for them to be kept updated on each other so he was glad when Thor strode in and interrupted the conversation.

"How fares the Hawkeye?" he asked. "Is he well attended?"

"We haven't heard anything yet," Steve said. "They're still checking him over."

"My friend, Dr. Selvig, has been under the charge of several of your healers. They seem versed in their discipline."

Natasha looked over. "How is he? Dr. Selvig?"

A shadow fell over Thor's face. "Much abused by what has occurred. I fear it to be an affliction of spirit as of body." He frowned, tension and frustration evident in his broad frame. "My brother has much to answer for."

"It was only because of Dr. Selvig that I was able to close that thing–"

"Lorentzian wormhole," Bruce offered.

"– _thing_ before anything else could come through," Natasha said. She was aware that that knowledge might not stem the physicist's guilt – guilt wasn't something to be tamed by reason, after all, and Clint himself was proof of that – but she wanted Thor to know what Selvig had been able to accomplish.

The god seemed gladdened, and not entirely surprised, by the fact. "Dr. Selvig is a strong man," he said. "As the Hawkeye is."

"He is that," Natasha said softly. She shook her head and made an effort to turn her thoughts away from the image of the man, pale and injured on a cold floor, which she could still see every time she closed her eyes. Turning to Steve and Tony, she asked something she'd almost forgotten about in the hours they'd been waiting, "Did you find out what he was doing in there?" For a brief moment, she had the horrible idea that he had been compromised again and was looking for information on SHIELD.

Bruce, who hadn't been paying attention to that either, paused in his pace and also looked up with interest. Steve had folded up the papers he'd gathered, with all the care he could, and had put them in his jacket pocket. He pulled them out now, holding them loosely in his hands. "He was writing letters. To the families of the men who died."

"Oh," Bruce said.

Natasha met Steve's gaze and then held her hand out. Steve gave the papers over to her and slowly, she opened them.

"Letters?" Thor questioned, then nodded before anyone could clarify. "I see. To express his commiseration."

"They seem like letters of notification," Steve said. "I'm not sure if they still do everything the same but, back when I...back then, there were telegrams they'd send."

"They do it in person now," Tony corrected. He'd never been in the military of course (rules and authority figures weren't things that mixed well with Tony) but his work with defense contracts and his friendship with Rhodes had allowed him to pick up on a few things military. "I'm not sure if he'd have even been allowed to send those."

"He'd have found a way to get it to them," Natasha said, looking up briefly. "These aren't –" She shrugged her shoulders. "He meant for these to be read." She shuffled to a new letter and nearly dropped them all.

"Agent Romanoff?" Steve asked, seeing the reaction.

"He wrote two for Coulson," she said, looking surprised and stricken. She had passed over Coulson's first letter, addressed to his listed next-of-kin, several pages back. Seeing his name again had been a shock. Reading the contents, however, were what caused a brief tightness in her chest. "One to his sister, in Boston. The other's to a woman he'd been dating, a musician, I think."

"Cellist," Tony filled in shortly.

"She moved away. I didn't know how serious they were but...Clint must have known that she wouldn't find out about it otherwise." Natasha flicked back over the pages, skimming, and felt a second contraction around her chest as she realized how many of them had personal information slipped in between the military wording. How many of those that had died that Clint had known, had gotten to know, personally.

It was something she avoided, if not exactly actively then at least knowingly. She knew the names of the agents on the field, as well as the support staff. There were a few she spoke to, when they encountered each other, and a handful more that she nodded to in the hallways. But eating shawarma with the Avengers (someday, when things weren't so brittle and distant-seeming, she would mock Tony for that name) was the first time she'd sat down with the intention of eating with teammates.

She folded them again and held it out to Steve. He looked surprised but took them and tucked them back into his jacket.

Silence fell again after that. At first, it was merely a soft quiet as they absorbed the information. But it grew deeper and deeper into a silence that Steve recognized. Few who had experienced it could understand just how truly the term "brothers-in-arms" rang. Battle was something intensely personal and only in the aftermath – when you found yourself with those whom you had shared an experience so extreme and who had seen you in pain, in struggle, at your utmost – did you recognize how strange it was to feel so very familiar with complete strangers.

Thor glanced over in his direction and there was understanding there. Though feasting and song often followed a victory, Thor had known many nights when he, Volstagg, Sif, Hogun, Fandral and Loki had merely sat around a fire, saying nothing. He, too, knew this as a moment of shared companionship and relished it as much as he did any part of battle. Perhaps more. Thor turned toward the door which, if he had correctly interpreted the others (and this was no given, Midgardians were prone to a strangeness he did not understand), separated them from another of their battle-kin.

He'd not known the Hawkeye outside of battle and felt toward the man an embarrassed awkwardness not usually given to his boisterous personality. It was similar to what he'd felt with Dr. Selvig, a constant awareness that it was _his_ brother was responsible for a particularly intrusive assault against them. That the Hawkeye had fought with them so closely afterward and his actions during the fight itself earned him a warrior's respect. Learning how deeply he considered his fallen comrades had cemented his honor as well, in Thor's eyes. Midgard continued to surprise him with the worthiness of its protectors.

* * *

Just past that dull metal door, Captain E. Gage, MD stepped away from the bed and the patient it held. He raised a hand to rub at his temple and paused when he realized that his gloved fingers were still covered with blood. He frowned. "Ew."

"That's professional," Kedrick, a former Navy corpsman and recent SHEILD recruit, commented from where he was gathering the used equipment.

"I've been on-duty for nineteen hours," Gage said tiredly, "any decent vocabulary abandoned ship after the fourth casualty." He glanced at the clock, four hours and change since this last one came in. "Well, he's stable and that's about as much as he can handle today." The rest would have to wait until they'd given enough blood for the agent to take major surgery.

"Excuse me, doctor?" Gage turned his head to see a face he didn't recognize and it was a moment before he realized that this was one of the non-Medical agents they'd appropriated as an orderly when their little flying island had been nearly shot down.

"Yes. Uh?"

"Jameson, sir."

"Right."

"Are you going to go out and talk to his team?"

"Excuse me?"

"That's Agent Barton, sir. One of the ones who, um –" he paused, apparently trying to find a way to describe exactly what those six had accomplished.

Gage filled in for him, having been fully appraised of the situation as he had been one of the ones clearing the others for activity. "One of the ones who saved the world from an alien invasion?" He was going to keep saying that and one day it wouldn't sound crazy. "One of the three who didn't come in for a med check?"

"Yes, sir. Well, the others are outside. They've been waiting, sir," he offered up.

Gage rolled his shoulders and nodded.

* * *

Everyone gave a sharp little jerk when the doors slid open, stepping toward it instinctively. A tall, blond man wearing a surgical gown stepped out, blocking their path and view of the inside. "Dr. Gage," he introduced shortly. "I'm assuming you're all here for Agent Barton?"

"Yes, sir," Steve replied.

"How is he?" Natasha asked.

"The collapse itself isn't a cause for major alarm," Gage said.

"What?" Tony asked, eyebrows rising. "Since when is face-planting considered a sign of good health?"

"It's not. Please don't aspire to it," Gage said. "I realize how worrying it was, but over the past few days, we've seen many cases of general exhaustion in the victims of Loki's control. Obviously, we haven't had the opportunity to study exactly how it works and what it does long-term but during the days when he was under that control, it seems that Agent Barton didn't sleep and rarely ate. Dr. Selvig, who was under for about the same amount of time, has said as much for his own experience. Agent Barton was unconscious for several hours after the fight with Agent Romanoff but that hardly counts as rest. Add to that his activities after and his body simply didn't have the energy to continue."

"You still haven't said why that would be a good thing," Bruce said.

"Relatively good, anyway. We're lucky it happened when it did because otherwise his more extensive injuries might not have been noticed until he'd lost too much blood," he paused. "I'm going about this wrong. Sorry. It's been a pretty long day."

"Yeah," Tony said, "we get that."

"Agent Barton was bleeding internally, a slow bleed in his kidney. It's something he might have passed off as bruising or a strain of the intercostal muscles. Ignoring such aches is something I'm beginning to realize is contagious around here. If the physical exhaustion had not stopped him, we wouldn't have known about the bleed until it was too late to repair. As it is, he lost a lot of blood." He ran a hand over his face. "We've managed to stop the bleed temporarily. We'll go in again and fix it when we've replenished his blood supply. There are other, less immediate injuries. Several cracked ribs, possible pulmonary contusions – "

"Bruises on his lungs," Bruce translated for Steve and Thor.

"Right. And the variety of scrapes, strains, and bruises the rest of you amassed. We've done some very basic scans, but we'll give him the longer brain scan we gave to the other compromised agents later." Gage shook his head. "I'm too tired to do this properly. I'm sorry. Agent Barton is stable for now. He's not going to jump out of bed and give you a jig – "

"He might," Natasha said seriously. Though her expression had not changed, her entire form seemed less tense than it had been. "You've never had him as a patient. I'd advise you to tie him down or he'll disappear out an air duct."

"Yeah, and I'll bet my annual salary I know who taught him that trick," Tony said, glancing at her.

A slow sort of unwinding eased through the group and Gage gave a faint smile. "There are a couple of hurdles left to get through, but he's okay for now. Please, Agent Romanoff, Dr. Banner, go away and get some rest." He turned a practiced physician's eye on the other three. "Captain, _Mr._ Odinson, records indicate you haven't been medically cleared. And Mr. Stark, Dr. Sidva and a certain Ms. Potts have dictated that you be "captured" and kept for overnight observation as well."

Steve (due to innumerable hours spent before and after the serum experiment), Thor (due to a bad experience in one in New Mexico) and Tony (due to a personality that made him prickly when he wasn't the expert at something) were collectively not fond hospitals or doctors on principal. Given, however, that complying with Gage might allow them a peek at Clint, they acquiesced with grace.

Natasha frowned, obviously desiring to go inside as well. She weighed the idea of arguing with Gage over the relative stability of the Infirmary air ducts.

"I have a headache," Bruce declared. Everyone turned to look at him. "A very sudden one."

Natasha didn't look at him before saying, "I do, too."

Gage peered at the both of them. When he didn't say anything, Bruce added, "It feels like it might be brain tumor."

"It would be best to make sure," Natasha said.

The doctor tilted his head to look at the ceiling for a moment before sighing. "Right, I suppose you should come in as well." They really didn't have the room, what with all the injured, but Gage figured that they would find a way inside anyway and he could always station on the floor.

As Gage turned to go inside the Infirmary, Tony looked at the two of them. "You are the least subtle people I've ever seen. And I'm standing next to demi-god with no inside voice and a man whose pants might actually burst into fire if he tried to tell a lie." He shook his head sadly. "I'd have expected it from you," he said to Bruce before turning to Natasha, "but you're supposed to be spy." He _tsk_-ed and walked into the Infirmary.

"It's rather unsettling to be called obvious by a man who, by his own admission, has his own theme song," Bruce commented as they followed.

* * *

Authoring Notes: If you are reading this, I don't deserve you. Not only was I not faster in updating, I was _so_ much longer in doing it. I am a completely ridiculous person and I apologize. Thank you, though, for your reviews and alerts. I really appreciate the feedback. I'm so glad that people responded positively to the second chapter and that the whole letter sequence seemed to work.

The medical, um, "information" in this is extremely suspect. That last crash/fall through the window had Hawkeye looking pretty pained so I internet-researched (which, as most people know, is not really research at all) various, serious consequences and cobbled the rest out of imagination. My apologies to those who know what they're about and might have read this with a cringe. Please let me know if there's something egregious to be fixed.

And Thor has appeared! His speech pattern is probably closer to the comics than the movie (not that there's a huge difference). It's just that I have easier access to one than the other for reference at the moment (at least until it comes out on DVD...yay!) so that's what I'm using. Let me know how you feel about his, or any of the others', characterizations. Writing for so many distinct, and distinctly awesome, personalities is hard.

The next chapter will have Clint! Because he's awesome and his name is in the character dealie despite the fact that I've neglected him mightily. I won't make promises about when it'll be out because that didn't turn out so well last time. Instead I offer the sincere hope that you enjoyed this and a great many thanks for reading.

God bless!


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